Argos aims to circulate writing about topical matters of public and political import that is local, critical and accessible. We believe critical intellectual conversation should be heard here in Aotearoa-New Zealand, not simply published for credit in international fora for more limited and specialised audiences. Of particular interest to us is writing that grounds its concern with the public or political good of place-making in theory or philosophy.

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mark

mark was an artist collective formed mid-2012, made up of six third-year Elam students. The collective was formed as an act of resistance to the university’s neoliberal appropriation of education. mark based itself on the rupture of the competitive, individualist nature of the university in order to rethink education, not as a commodifiable good, but a process of reciprocity and collaboration. By removing the individualistic transactional process by which a grade is given, and by which success is measured, it revealed the possibility of collectively controlling the education process. In doing this, mark was able to renegotiate the possibility of an education which superseded market logic and neoliberal structures. The students involved used the space formed by this rupture in the neoliberal logic to create a dialogue about our current situation and how to collectively create change.